Our July 2019 Event: A social with a mix of language professionals 

After the hottest day of the year (or on record?), the lounge of Tate Modern’s beautiful restaurant and bar on the 9th floor was a refreshing and stunning location for our free-to-attend July social event.

There was one thing we didn’t talk about though: the weather.

We had a wonderful mix of language professionals attending, including a Dutch translator, author, a Chinese language and culture enthusiast, a marketing strategist and copywriter, a Neurolinguistic Programming practitioner and life coach, relationship coach, a Swahili teacher, voice coach, author and radio show host, a German and Hungarian teacher, and a brain researcher specialised in researching the brains of mono- and bilingual individuals.

Due to a mishap in our location set-up, two people we were so looking forward to see ended up in the 6th floor bar, looking for us. By the time we realised this, it was too late, the evening had gone by, and Gabriella, the host had learnt a valuable lesson regarding location settings on the online ticket platform. Luckily, the guys were very forgiving and reassured us that actually, they had a great time too, enjoying a dinner in Tate Modern and the beautiful views. But it would have been so lovely to join the two ‘groups’. Next time!

We talked about all things lingo, including what it actually means to be bilingual, the language structures of certain languages, the challenges and joys of working as a translator and interpreter, what it’s like working as a literary translator and translating the biography of someone who actually speaks the language it’s being translated into perfectly. We also discussed marketing copywriting and writing content for a business (website copy, leaflets etc.). Then, we exchanged thoughts on cultures and their cuisines, what fluency really means, as well as areas in the brain responsible for language acquisition and an ongoing study into how brains of individuals speaking more than one language may differ from monolinguals.

It was an exhilarating evening spent in the company of wonderful language professionals, we chatted away until way beyond 9pm over a few drinks.

Thank you for all who attended, see you next month!

#wearelanguageprofessionals